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Happiness Isn’t Everything

It was nice to see Tony Woodlief (over at McArdle’s blog) take on the cult of happiness. Happiness is surely a good, but it makes me unhappy to see people seemingly exalt it above all else – and this appears to be an especially strong current in a certain type of libertarian.

This gives me a chance to advertise my coming Pileus series on tensions within libertarianism and the libertarian movement.

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[Happiness is surely a good, but it makes me unhappy to see people seemingly exalt it above all else]

this has a peculiar fork.

either the happiness people are correct, and by strict utilitarian calculus, whomever outnumbers the other should win. we could find happiness through denial and deceit. happiness remains the most important thing, we just don’t tell people that.

or let’s say you are correct, happiness is not the highest good. at which point, why should your happiness be a consideration if there’s something more important we should pursue?

As for the sentence you cite, I was trying (not very well, I guess) to be funny.

I’ll sound a bit like Sven here and say that we are trying to triangulate a number of goods, happiness being one of them. We certainly don’t want to live a mere life of pure pleasure and happiness. Otherwise we could plug into an experience machine and maximize the kinds of experiences that would make us happy. Like Nozick argues, we also want to live an authentic life – even if that means reducing our happiness (and I think it is a non-starter to just say that living an authentic – or insert anything else here – life makes us happier so that is why we care about authenticity, etc, etc,).

But our happiness is certainly part of the equation for a flourishing life.

still, though, i think there’s a legitimate question for the experience machine. we can value authenticity because we get pleasure out of authenticity. we could treat it almost like banks treat loans (back when this was traditional banking, let’s call it a car loan).

so if you fall into the category of people unbothered by in-authenticity, the premium the experience machine is low. even a slight increase in pleasure would make you want to take the opportunity. this would be the same as if you’re a bank lending to a customer with an especially high credit rating and down payment. you’re willing to receive a low interest rate because of how likely you are to receive your interest and principal back.

if you fall into the category of people who really, truly value authenticity? you can make a higher premium. this is almost equivalent to paying a higher interest rate for greater risk.

there is a possibility of authenticity above all else (supra omnia diligaris, my catholic education is coming back!)

in those cases, you can have a repugnant conclusion. imagine a world of billions of people who are positively miserable. they are suffering, tortured, and mentally anguished at all times.

they are living in the world as it is. they have the option for an experience machine to vastly improve their lives.

would they choose a life of true misery with little hope over a life of pleasure, purely because of 10 minutes of epistemic in-authenticity? they won’t know that it’s fake in the experience machine.

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Pileus is a group of scholars who examine public policy and philosophy in light of our respective disciplines. We differ in many ways but share a commitment to liberty and personal responsibility.

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In ancient Rome, a pileus was a felt cap given to slaves upon receiving their freedom. Since then, this simple cap has been a powerful symbol of liberty.